Lecturer in the Geography of Eastern Europe and Chairman, Department of Social Sciences, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. Editor of An Historical Geography of the Balkans.

Slovakia, landlocked country of central Europe. It is roughly coextensive with the historic region of Slovakia, the easternmost of the two territories that from 1918 to 1992 constituted Czechoslovakia. The short history of independent Slovakia is one of a desire to move from mere autonomy within...